Wednesday, September 28, 2011

I get a lot of emails from people asking me how to break into the ID field.
They’ve been trying to get a job but haven’t found the right door to open yet.

“I’ve been teaching for years and now I want a change.”

“I’ve been reading up on the field and it seems really interesting.”

“You did it, Cammy, so how can I?”

“I’ve got a degree in ID now, but no one will hire me because I don’t have any experience.”

This post is my response to those emails. Because I’m an extremely flawed human being I don’t always respond to these right away and then they sit in my inbox for months and months and wither away on the vine. So my apologies to those of you who’ve written that I didn’t get back to!

Here are three ideas I have to help you break into the field:

Strut Your Stuff
You’ve got to show what you know. You have to provide some proof of your capabilities and at the very least be able to point to a really kick ass portfolio of design treatments or even courses you’ve built (or collaborated on with someone else). But if you don’t have any job experience yet doing this kind of work, what can you do? Well – make something up!

About What?

Well, how about you? Tell the story of your life and why you’re going to be a great ID.

Make up a course on a topic that interests you – maybe it’s dishwasher repair.

Volunteer for an organization like Lingos (eLearning Global Giveback Competition) and create something for their clients. And if you’re really that good, you might even win an award while you’re at it.

If you really want to show your stuff, take one topic and create a few different designs out of it. Make one a goal-based scenario, another a game, another a more straightforward information presentation. Create some job aids or tips sheets to go with it. Try different design approaches using different tools to show you’re not just a one trick pony.

That’s right. Do something whackadoodle and crazy – to show that you know how to think outside of the box of an elearning course and are thinking creatively about solutions that provide experiences all along the user spectrum.

And if your ID bag does not include using actual tools (mine doesn’t!), well just write a design treatment or script. That way your potential employers can see how you write and how you approach design challenges.

Learn Some Tools

Most employers these days want to hire IDs that know it all: instructional design and adult learning theory, graphics, script writing and authoring tools. It’s way too many hats to wear for most people, but it’s the reality. In fact, most job postings typically include tools right in the job description. Captivate, Articulate, Lectora, and Camtasia are the big off-the-shelf authoring tools that seem to come up in a lot of job postings.
SO. Learn ‘em. Go download some free 30 day trials and mess around for a month and create those courses I mentioned above.

If you have the budget for it, go to an elearning conference (DevLearn and ASTD TechKnowledge are two of the biggies, but there are smaller more local conferences that might work for you). Learn from the masters, hear the latest ideas on learning with technology, connect and schmooze and start building your brand.

Search on It

Of course, you’re already looking on all the job boards for listings, right? SALT, elearning guild and ASTD are just a few places to start.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

How does one navigate this field and become a professional in this space? How did you arrive here, Cathy?

When I started out there was no ID degree (in the early 80’s). Job was to help people in libraries who needed to learn how to use computers. Was a technical writer, tech support person…(while she was a student)…eventually got into elearning for k-12. Bachelors degree in English and that is it! ID training is on the job and self taught through the wonders of the Internet – reading theory and research online.

Cathy is big on self-taught. “I learned by observing what worked and didn’t. I was highly motivated to write instruction that would keep people from calling me.”

Also spent some time as a copyrighter and being a marketing consultant – about communication…

Boring experiences that make people suffer isn’t going to change anyone’s behavior.

Moving from information dumps to more problem solving formats.

Giving people a safe place to fail.

Stuffing information into people doesn’t make them learn it! (And yet we have an obsession with delivering information. Instead we need to focus on what the learner need to do with it?)

Is lack of knowledge really the cause of the problem? What can we do to give the learner the experience to learn through success and failure. We learn by: experiencing things, drawing conclusions from the situation, so we build a “case” in our own minds.

As IDs, we need to find the courage/strength/political power to push back on clients who want us to just push the information. Instead ask, “what do we need the learners to do?” We need to redefine our roles in organizations from converting infomration in a course to becoming performance consultants.

If we evaluate our elearning and see if actually changes performance on the job.

Make more examples available of experiential elearning. So that the default ID of what elearning is (screens full of elearning quizzes) broadens to include other things…(the default elearning course that’s info screen, info screen, quiz question…)

What is Action Mapping?1. The Strategic Goal. Start with a measurable goal for your project. Why does this elearning deserve to exist? How will the org benefit in a measurable way? (the bulls eye)

2. Real world actions people need to do to reach this goal. (the green triangles)

3. Practice activities – to practice what people need to DO. (the orange hands)

4. Crucial information needed for that activity. (the blue dots)

(You should only put in the course that which the learner needs to use – everything else should go in the job aid!)

At the beginning ask “Why does this project need to exist? What do they need to do? What do they need to practice? What information do we need to include?”

Allen mentions the gated corporate environment that most IDs have to work in – the lawyers who want this, the compliance officer who wants this, etc. – all of these stopping mechanisms…

Get all of the stakeholders and subject matter experts involved from the inception of the idea – so they’ll work together for a common goal.

Action Mapping is a way to brainstorm the activities. Then you can use whatever delivery format works best for those activities – could be face to face or online. Ideally, what we end up designing feels like a series of activities rather than an information dump.

Low text scenarios – one scene scenario with a compelling, complex questions. You see feedback from your decision. You see someone get bloody because you passed them the scalpel in the wrong way.

So how long does this take?

The hardest part is identifying the strategic goal and what you need to do. Those first two rings are the most challenging – but you can do it in a two hour call.

You often end up producing less because you put the information into PDFs, etc – less time making boring information look slick. More time on creating activities.